Squanderer in chief
By James Kirchick
April 28, 2009
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At a stop on his grand global apology tour this spring, President Obama was asked by a reporter in France if he believed in "American exceptionalism." This is the notion that our history as the world's oldest democracy, our immigrant founding and our devotion to liberty endow the United States with a unique, providential role in world affairs.

Rather than endorse the proposition -- as every president in recent memory has done one way or another -- Obama offered a strange response: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
This is impossible. If all countries are "exceptional," then none are, and to claim otherwise robs the word, and the idea of American exceptionalism, of any meaning. Besides, American exceptionalism is demonstrable -- Cuban journalists, Chinese political dissidents, Eastern Europeans once again living in the shadow of a belligerent Russia and, yes, even some Brits and Greeks look toward the U.S. and nowhere else to defend freedom.

Viewed within the context of the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama's nonsensical statement is part of a disturbing pattern. Since swearing the oath of office, our president has traveled the world criticizing his predecessor, confessing America's supposed sins and otherwise flagellating the nation he leads on the altar of international "public opinion."

Obama delivered his first collective mea culpa on our behalf in an interview with the Arab Al Arabiya television network, in which he said that he hoped to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." (Would that be when Iranian revolutionaries held our embassy hostage for 444 days?) Obama neglected to identify what exactly had caused the rift between the United States and the "Muslim world," leaving his audience to believe that Islamic radicalism is as much our fault as it is of the Islamic radicals themselves.

But that was a mild beginning. Obama waited to ramp up the apologetics until his first trip overseas. In Strasbourg, France, he said the United States had "failed to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world" and that "there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." Never mind the questionable basis of these statements (even if Europe played a "leading role in the world," which it hasn't since nearly destroying itself 60 years ago, how have Americans "failed to appreciate" it?). More troubling was the impropriety of Obama's willingness to attack President George W. Bush in an obvious gambit to curry favor with Europeans.

Not content with faulting Americans for their arrogance (in France, no less!), Obama delivered a speech in Prague days later where he offered a not-so-subtle apology for America's use of nuclear weapons in World War II. "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act" in furtherance of total disarmament, he said.

Yet the use of the atomic bomb in ending the war with Japan saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and America's possession of nuclear weapons prevented the Cold War from becoming bloodier. More unsettling, however, was the implication that the U.S., and not regimes that have illicitly sought such technology, is at fault for nuclear proliferation.

Obama apologized some more in Turkey. "I know that the trust that binds us has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced. Let me say this as clearly as I can: The United States is not at war with Islam."

Here, Obama seamlessly joined the Bush administration's irritation at Ankara's refusal to allow American troops' passage to Iraq with the bogus claim that the United States has, until Obama's presence in the White House, been "at war with Islam," an assertion that essentially (and falsely) blames Bush for declaring such a war.

When not establishing false premises about the previous administration (the easier to glorify his own) or apologizing for his country, Obama has shown unusual deference to autocrats. At the Summit of the Americas, he calmly sat through a 50-minute anti-American tirade by the communist leader of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and was disturbingly ebullient in glad-handing Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez. There's nothing wrong with the president participating in a multilateral summit where criticism, even egregiously unfair criticism, of the U.S. is expressed. But if he can sit and take verbal abuse from Latin American demagogues, then surely speaking a little truth in response to their lies is appropriate.



It was plenty controversial when, years into his ex-presidency, Jimmy Carter publicized his critique of U.S. policy by meeting with hostile governments to conduct freelance diplomacy. In 1994, Carter traveled to North Korea, called its then-dictator, Kim Il Sung, a "vigorous and intelligent" man, and took the Clinton administration by surprise, negotiating a deal empowering Kim to continue his nascent nuclear program. But Carter at least waited until he left the White House before denigrating his country.

The ill effects of Obama's obsequious behavior will not be immediate. His friendly handshake with Chavez will not suddenly lead to the closing of more opposition radio stations in Venezuela, nor will his bemoaning American arrogance in Europe lead to more Russian aggression tomorrow.

But Obama's fecklessness emboldens our adversaries and discourages advocates of liberty around the world. The consequences will be felt in damage to American prestige. As much as liberals like to claim that Bush "squandered" America's reputation, Obama is doubling that offense by setting up his country -- rhetorically and materially -- to be overtaken by other powers on the international stage. He is paving the way for America's decline.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor of the New Republic

100 Days of Disquietude by Alan Brinkley
Obama's first few months weren't as frenzied as Roosevelt's--but they might have been more productive.
Post Date Wednesday, April 29,

There is no very good reason to judge a new president by his first 100 days. Some of our greatest presidents accomplished little in their first months. Some of our least successful had impressive beginnings. But ever since the New Deal trumpeted the successes of its own first 100 days, it has been common to take note of what subsequent presidents have done in the same period. President Obama is aware of the history. He read books about Roosevelt's first 100 days before he took office, and some members of his team have referred often to what they hoped to accomplish in their first months. So it makes more than usual sense to consider what the new administration has accomplished in this short but significant period--one that has been less frenetic than Franklin Roosevelt's, but in some ways more productive. (For photographs from Obama's first 100 days,

Franklin Roosevelt was a dynamo of energy in his first 100 days, and the frenzy of activity that he created was itself important in building confidence and optimism in the face of growing panic. Roosevelt's inaugural address promised "action, and action now." He made liberal use of radio, the first president to have done so, to make sure that Americans were aware of what he was doing. But most of all, he passed legislation--lots of it, and not all of it good.

One of his first bills, the Economy Act, reduced government spending in such areas as veteran benefits and the salaries of federal employees--and it actually exacerbated the nation's greatest problem, deflation. The National Industrial Recovery Act, the most popular legislative achievement of Roosevelt's first 100 days, created a corporatist behemoth that also promoted deflation by artificially increasing prices without increasing incomes. Its failure was visible well before the Supreme Court struck it down in 1935.

But in those early days, Roosevelt did more good than harm. He saved the financial system from collapse, almost certainly the most important event in the first 100 days, and perhaps in the first two years, of the administration. The "banking holiday" he declared immediately after his inauguration, the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act (which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and whose repeal in 1999 is often blamed for much of our own present crisis), and the birth of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the undermining of which in recent years contributed to the financial collapse)--together, these measures helped the nation's financial institutions to survive, even if they did not immediately flourish. Other New Deal measures in these first months helped create a significant public works program, jobs for the unemployed, relief for people in need, and aid to the staggering farm economy.

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The Obama administration didn't push through the sheer number of initiatives of the New Deal's first months--but its achievements are impressive nevertheless, and appear more likely to create a better ratio between good programs and bad ones. Roosevelt's efforts to stimulate economic growth through public works and relief programs were trivial compared to the enormity of Obama's stimulus package (which some critics feel is itself inadequate to the need). His effort to stabilize and strengthen the banks is still a work in progress--and a much more difficult task than the one Roosevelt faced--but it far exceeds in size and expense any such effort in our history. His first budget, not yet through Congress, marks the boldest change in public policy since at least 1980 and offers the first realistic hope of serious health care reform since 1994.

Roosevelt in his first 100 days had few international challenges, other than avoiding bad proposals from Britain and other ailing nations. Obama faces a much more bewildering array of foreign policy problems. And while no major victories, military or diplomatic, are yet in sight, he has significantly changed the tone and image of American internationalism in ways that should make future progress more likely. He has repudiated the use of torture (and made public official documents confirming its use), reduced some of the discredited hype over the "war on terror," treated friends and potential antagonists alike with courtesy and respect, and created a cool and pragmatic approach to America's role in the world that has softened the often ideological and inflexible policies of the recent past.

Perhaps most importantly, Obama has taken a shaken nation, deeply disillusioned with government, and helped it believe again that politics is not necessarily a dirty word, that progress can be made, and that government can at least sometimes be trusted. Just as Roosevelt helped create confidence through his "fireside chats" on the radio, Obama has proved to be an exceptional communicator on television, radio, and the Internet.

Effective communication was crucial to Roosevelt, because his first 100 days were important less for their achievements than for the political power they gave him to confront the more daunting tasks that still awaited. Obama, similarly, is going to need all the accumulated goodwill of his first 100 days to address the terrible problems that stand before him: two intractable wars, a continuing financial crisis, the prospect of nuclear enemies, and dangers we don't even know about yet (like the flu a week ago). The 100 days are over, and the real work is still to come